Watch & Listen

Serena Ryder

With 60 songs written and ready to go, Serena Ryder had some tough choices to make when starting work on her new album. She made the toughest of all: She threw them out. Every one of them. A full year’s hard work into the trash.

Best thing, the Juno Award-winning artist says, she’s ever done.

Ryder has earned grass-roots acclaim as a guitar-wielding singer-songwriter, an approach at the core of the five dozen songs she had on hand. Starting fresh allowed her the freedom to see that she’d only been showing one side of her talents and passions. She put down the guitar and wrote, first and foremost, for her voice and for her full musical personality. The result is Harmony, an album of wide range and deep vision, driven by a fierce love — and matching talent — for music of soulful connections, for the voice as the supreme instrument, for “pop” values at their most grounded and most reaching.

Lee DeWyze

With his rough-hewn voice and laid-back Midwestern charm, Lee DeWyze won over millions of viewers as a contestant and eventual winner of the ninth season of American Idol. An accomplished singer, guitarist, and songwriter who had already built a following on the Chicago club scene by the time he auditioned for Idol, DeWyze displayed his true nature as an artist on his major-label debut the following year, "Live It Up". The title track captures the easy-going spirit of the album — a breezy blend of rootsy pop, rock, and folk, anchored by DeWyze's soulful, husky voice and bright-sounding acoustic guitar.

"I love guys like Cat Stevens, Kris Kristofferson, Dave Matthews, and Ray LaMontagne," DeWyze says. "I'm a sucker for hard-edged vocals over pretty melodies and catchy grooves, so that's what I wanted to do on my album debut. It shows the flip-side of what I was able to present on Idol because it's 100 percent me. I'm so proud of it."